I figured It could be fun if Dungeon masters would have a place here to share, debate, discuss their techniques, woefull tales, and cook up adventures.

It does, of course, not have to be D&D related, any tabletop RPG is more than welcome.

So have at it! ;)

I hate being the Dungeon Master. it's boring :P

Depends, of course.

I myself played as a player before, and getting to be the DM of our group proved to be a fun challenge. For me cooking up sadistic/hilarious situations is half the fun, the other half obviously being serving your preparations to the players

Sometimes it can get a bit bland, but overal I'm rather fond of it :p

I've always enjoyed creating stories and worlds. Then my players try to blow it apart and you have to think on your feet to keep them on the right path. "No, you can't steal that orb of lucidity from the church, the guards will slaughter you!" I've killed a team of adventurers for that kind of stuff before because they didn't believe I'd kill off their beloved characters... Which really pissed them off but I'm like "Treat your character like a real person. Would an intelligent, sentient being walk into a militant church and steal its prized possession in broad day-light?" Still, I was never invited to be GM for that group again.

I don't know anything about being a dungeon master or playing tabletop RPG's in general, but I think posting a link to The Spoony One's "Counter Monkey" series is kind of obligatory here.

I think I only ever wacked a PC twice over the 4 years I've been DM'ing. It should be noted though, that for those 4 years I've only ever DM'ed a band consisting of my 2 best friends, my younger brother and my father (which does not always necessarily make things much simpler).

I have to admitt too we aren't extremely serious roleplayers, or at least not in the beginning. The players simply expect me to offer challenging situation which offer food for thought and much laugther, and they know that every now and then they can try out something drastic (they once set the rich people's district of a city ablaze whilst on a topple-the-evil-government kind of adventure).

I sometimes find it a bit hard to keep the pace flowing coherently though. Every now and then the plot seems to slack away a bit. I can always rely on my players to do some freelance adventuring with more generic "goblin nest clearing" quests while I brew up something more suitably epic though, which is a big boon.

It is for me, as a DM mostly a matter of balancing serious, thought-provoking plots with more light-hearthed combat encounters.

Oh, I was wondering wether there are any DMs about who have ample experience with fading suns?

I love D&D, but I suck at DMing. I much rather play as a regular player.

At the beginning of this year I DM'ed a session of DnD 1st edition to my 12 year old nephew and three of his friends.
I was planning to play only for a few hours but we ended playing for a whole weekend. With a few stops to eat and sleep.

We started very slow because none of them had any contact with this kind of game and I was very rusty. Until this time, it had been years since the last time I played on a proper RPG session. Anyway... Although the box (see attach) comes with an adventure I decided to adapt to them the plot of Icewind Dale (the PC game) which I had recently played. It was fresh on my mind making it easy to use as an adventure.

I managed to guide them from Easthaven to Kuldahar passing through the orc cave, the Kuldahar pass and the kobold attack on the farm. I made a "save state" when they were about to leave for the first time to the Valley of Shadows.

We had a blast! From time to time my nephew asks me when we will continue to play.

He, I also kind of started of like that ;)

My elder brother wanted to run a game of Vampire: the Masquerade while we were on vacation a long time ago. Unfortunately, he had to do a few exams he had failed over later that summer, so I was instantly bombarded to DM (as the Dutch saying goes).

Since then We've played D&D (the fourth edition only, I don't really see the problem), Fading Suns, A Song of Ice and Fire (guess what that one is all about), and now D&D again after a big amount of nostalgia :)

It was quite hard at first, but it's like a second nature now. It takes some getting worked into I guess...

Mostly been the DM/GM for rpg game's. Alot of D&D 3.5 and star wars d20. Haven't done fading suns before so I can't offer much on the specifics of the system. If you had questions for problems or situations your are getting into I'm sure I, and others, could help you.

I will also add in a woeful tale(from my perspective).

D&D 3.5 game and I had a nice sized group trying to do some investigative work in a city. I left it open for the players to come up with their own ideas of what building/area of the city they thought the bad guys might be working out of. After a bit of asking around they are highly suspicious of the temple and decide that next week they will explore it all the way and get to the bottom of things. They are all highly motivated and excited at the prospect of entering the temple.

I spend the next weekend crafting the temple into a fine dungeon for them to storm.

The next week comes around and I ask the party, rhetorically, if they were ready to enter the temple. Well to my "surprise" they look at each other and then try and remember why they wanted to go into the temple and finally they decide to go look around the city elsewhere and skip the temple!

I put surprise in quotations because if you haven't learned the lesson that your players will constantly do the unexpected then let this be a quick lesson into it. No matter how well you plan something out they will do something you didn't plan for. Which is why I tend to leave things not fully fleshed out so it's easier to change up.

Also if something like what happened to me happens to you just reskin the temple and use it for a dungeon later on :)

I've had the same thing happen to me aplenty :)

I once set up a whole quest in Fading suns about a small farming village terrorized by thugs who demanded protection pay, or else they'd leave the population up for grabs by the guerrillas in the mountains.

The players didn't care; in fact they just stole a car from the village (a lada monstertruck) and went on, totaly not caring.

I also love to work certain "facts" or even "idee fixes" into the game. i.e, when dealing with mages financially, they always try to screw the players over with bad wares or ginourmous prices for worthless trinkets. At one point the PC mage managed to screw the wizards back, which made for a great laugh :)

I love how the village is terrorized by thugs and so the pc's just decide to join the thugs side and terrorize the village some more by stealing a car and then leaving. Sure they didn't technically join their side but they pretty much did.

It could be fun if we buid a story which can be recreated in a fanmade D&D game.

Hmmm...

as a basic premise:

A large cult with many lowly common folk members and a select few upper class leaders is trying to resurect a long dead witch king tyrant who was slain long ago after pillaging and laying waste to nearly all of the world? Inspiration could be taken from Return to Castle Wolfenstein, as the cult and it's actions become more overt and destructive over time with their growing power, and corrupt the courts of many a strong kingdom; using Divide et impera in preperation for the witch-king's return.

Meanwhile many intelligence groups and perhaps the inquisition of Pelor are fighting a shadowy war against this cult, and sooner or later the players come into contact with them. Overt action is difficult, because even if high-ranking members are exposed, they are very hard to deal with. And if the players reveal themselves to them, they could be in tons of trouble

Other ideas? ;)